The Nine Realms

Poems and Writing inspired by the Norse realm of Helheim (The Realm through which men must pass to reach Nifelheim)

Featuring:

Lenka Monk, Ross Beattie, Joanna Lee &

Lydia Allison

All angels go to hell

By Lenka Monk

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The gates open. The beast’s blood dripping muzzle welcomes me.On my sin flavoured bones the creature can feast,Along with an offer of my blackened soul.Who’s the judge and condemns me to this place?Who writes the rules and decides what is right and what is wrong?The brave warriors kill their enemy in their thousands and yet they are sitting up in Valhalla, drinking wine for eternity. Never mind the innocent they slaughtered and called it collateral damage in the name of their Gods. What God justify killing?! I have not hurt anyone I have not taken a life.I only loved.Maybe wrongly by their standards, but still only loved.In spite of this terrible place and the suffering, in my mind there’s no doubt. I would do it all over again, without question, without so much as miniscule pause.I have lived my life by my rules, not by their misguided sense of righteousness.So come! Tear at my flesh, tear at my heart, tear at everything that youfind so awfully disgusting about me!And I shall laugh, for there’s nothing that you can take from me anymore. I left all that mattered, all that was good and pure somewhere else. Somewhere you cannot touch. Somewhere immortal.

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My Helheim

by Ross Beattie

When will the wolf swallow the sun ?I’m strung out again with another deadline tapping at the shade covered windows. Prompts and papers submerge the fragility of the only realm I really know.I’m trapped here.Waiting for the night.Hoping for help to cross the hills with the arrival of darkness. But as I wait, the shades will stay tightly drawn. The wolf’s scream pierces through my every half attempt to care, as I hide in the isolation. I can no longer leave, and nothing inside me desires to free. I watch the cracks below the door for the gentle flow of blood. As only then will I be safe from these endless winters and the shadow of the trembling tree might stop plaguing my mind.

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mist

by Lydia Allison

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in the place of misery of those who died happy. those who felt the soft lover press on their last breath.

the crawling surface of gjollresembles rainfallthe way water seemsto reach upto break from the moving weight. straining to join the clearing air.

here. at the end of allis the source of the wind that changes life to fire and skeletons and ash.sighs through the sweeping changing wall of fog.

the breeze carries to the graves of grey soulsand hits on the doors of the livinglike cold palms. like the desperate man who only wants to come home.

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The sybil’s lyric

by Joanna Lee

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We have lingered far too long in the land of these dead, buried beneath roots of returning sadness, longing for a new start, fair and green, for that which is hidden to disappear in the rivermud of April, for autumn to be born again.

The despair grows quiet and hungry and damp, so down and to the north beside a bend in the river of knives, under a blue back-lit moon I weigh my heart and lay myself to wait for the end of days when the watchman of the giants hunches to tune his harp.

The Nine Realms

Poems and Writing inspired by the Norse realm of Nidavellir (The Realm of the Dwarves)

Featuring:

Kate Garrett, Mina Polen, Ross Beattie and Lydia Allison

Fenrir

by Kate Garrett

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give me your handhe said,jaws dripping with doubteyes sidelongas they held out the bondsno heavier than silk strandsand I knew my handwas a small offeringas they wrapped him in chainsmade of lost thoughtsmade of movement and breathmade of the unseenand all of these slippedpast his eyes, sidelongand his jaws clenchedand my wrist ripped apartand I knew this was a small giftto the beast wrapped in chains.

What life is this?

by Ross Beattie

To become what I am I had to chew dead flesh from cold bone. Only then was I strong enough to deserve a reason. Below the ground I live my life in the dark. Craving only the gold that is hidden beneath the surface. This realm is mine but what life is this ?

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MP3 to come

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the dwarf

by Lydia Allison

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he’s the best to ask. so much more than people think. imir knew him.

made an axe.blade sharper than people made. cut who made it. Sliced space. they made mistakes.It shined like nightthe lunar glownone of them had seen.they fell in love.

traditional enemies

by Lydia Allison

every time my skin splits I think of her the serpent who reminded me what pain could be

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part of me always thought if I could commit to life or death I would have one

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could and would and should my fury blinds me now as indifference did then

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not immune to dying, just unable to be dead. impotent in the opposites of being and the other

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incapable to live as in the grip of death, I did

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Read by Karin Heyer

Requited Love

by Karin Heyer

(Inspired by the story of Gerd and Freyr)

When the ice is broken,
spring serenely promises
with snowdrops flooding
the ground and
magic serendipity works its way.
Young Freyr seated on Odin’s high seat
saw Gerd, giant Gymir’s daughter,
beautiful, beyond compare.
Like a hidden current draws a boat,
he fell in love.

The Nine Realms

Poems and Writing inspired by the Norse realm of Vanaheim

Featuring:

Ross Beattie, Lydia Allison and Karin Heyer

Vanaheim

by Ross Beattie

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I’m just like her, I need the wolves, the life of the mountain crawling through my veins. But he’ll never stay beside her this far from his precious sea.Why can he only love at the waters edge? Can he not see the passion flowing through her in the hills ? She could love him like no other if he can only bring himself to touch her skin beneath the fire red moon among the wildness of the forest. She knows she’ll sink below the tide if she stays there beside him, so she must return alone to the trees, far from his precious Vanaheim. Back to her land of thunder.

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MP3 TO COME

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Thrymheim

by Lydia Allison

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In the mornings the rocks glistenlike the sick, the dyingsoaked in the night. I rise early run my hand along the moisture of giant walls –swelled drops catching yellow light

I raise it to my mouth taste the nothing taste pure waterI expect salt, the minerals of my world

but remind myself this is not the way things are here, the hard forms move slowlyover years. Mostly unreachablealmost untouchable.

The Nine Realms

Poems and Writing inspired by the Norse realm of Asgard

Featuring:

Shirley Golden, John Mansell, Lydia Allison, Ross Beattie

Yggdrasill Groans

by Shirley Golden

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So here am I: ancient, wise and eternal. Rooted in the heart of Asgard, I channel into lower realms. Above, my canopy extends as a shield for all creation. Always was and is and will be, so they say. You might imagine that one of my standing would claim attention and be heeded. If only. Ra-ta-tap, ra-ta-tap: paws scurry along bark and branch from source to crown, conducting a berserk exchange. Together. Apart. Deep in the soil, Nidhogg’s scales abrade my knotted foundations. His teeth rip and tear, keen to unearth. Deer and harts snack on my shoots before I have time to unfurl. I’m gnawed and chewed upon, hung from, and tapped for sweet knowledge. But it’s never enough. Trouble is the gods aren’t so gifted to keep calm, listen or reflect.

Look at him, running around with his stunted hammer, trying to wield notions of equality, and him a god. Granted, he has a stout heart and likes to keep things in order, but why oh why can he never grasp when he’s being tricked by those frost giants? And the Allfather with his all-seeing eye? Pah! I mean, how often does He neglect to observe the rascal’s antics? Time and again the shape-changer creates chaos, and with his wheedle words slithers out of predicaments, slippery as a fish. Will they never learn? How many times can one make amends with ill-gotten gifts? I blame the eye. Sacrificed for wisdom, but He failed to appreciate the value of depth perception.

Is that harsh? I’m old, too old and cranky. If it wasn’t for the Norns and their care, I’d have rotted long ago. I tire of the gods and their games. It’s all act, act, act; treks to other realms, tests and trials. Who’s the toughest or the swiftest? I do my best to give sound counsel but I’m unconvinced that they hear me. All they sense is a susurration of leaves, lifted by the breeze, from which they seize a sketchy message and thunder ahead, regardless.

The wind gusts his ice-breath and my joints creak and moan, but I’ve seeds to sow and trust that one day they’ll take. Understand that I’ve considered on countless occasions what I might say (if only I could articulate their words, and if only they’d be still and mark my warnings). And the best advice I could offer?

Asgard

by John Mansell

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Slaked emptied the meaded-horns. The soothsayer’s runes yield their redden field. The smoke coil-feast entwining the bowed heads of Long Serpents bobbing with rimmed-eyed-red. The feast for slaughter to wed the lost to death.

Grim battle carrion shredded bannered. The disjointed stride of deed beneath the beak. Splashed vivid and dripping the echoes of dawn. War hounds draped in the grim spoils between the broken weaponry. The shattered bodies sprawl by jewel tipped shaft.

II

By Bifrost span the heralded torn from earthly womb. The golden shrill shouts of the choosers of the slain. Renewal of strength, rearmed and armoured by the wall of spears and the shielded roof. Aesir-dwellers in brine enactment of that perfect fate.

The daily spectacle before Geri and Freki by their Master’s feet; by Huguinn and Muninn at the godly ear. And man’s desire to repeat his seething deeds, rehealed and re-aled beneath the folds of Frigga’s sky, reveals no boy returning from whence only men filed.

III

Far below, the earthly funeral lights the dimming horizon. Adorning glory. The warriors muster and poets sing. The brutal ferocity glad against the breast of night. And in humble earth-wood home the hero’s woman beside another who soon will taste the meaded-horn.

And all men by their camped fires recite the lists of dead. Who line abreast four score by ten the many rounded doors. The quieting scene. The poet eyes the distant moraine. And hums in rhythm and fighting rhyme His battle hymn to those aloft in eternal praise.

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Poem read by Nicky Mortlock on John’s behalf.

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they never said

by Lydia Allison

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dying is travelling a light-year in a second completely alone, in a sense you have never felt before not in dreams or worship or bleak nights.

I was part of the writhing mass the storming spreading attack part of the dance between me and that man that other warrior that superior clan I was part of that company, closer than everything and when I look back his face was the face of my wife.

did he look away out of shame for my weakness shame for his own life shame for how tenderly my body leaned to his blade.

here is the look of oil on water like heaven’s reflection you can touch. as a child I chased rainbows made idols from glass refractions, stooped in the road.

I see thickly, this space shimmers with moving light violet edging faces I know and I mourn my rainbow revising memories of blood the sun, fresh leaves, and sky, pure darkness, and white light of ash and I weep clear tears laced with the pigments of the dead.

they never said it’s just like living, seeing one colour and searching for your own heartbeat. and when you go it’s more like everybody you’ve known is falling away, leaving you to grieve in morbid hope that they would not, that they would stay.

Lydia on her poem: ‘One of the things that intrigued me most throughout the reading was the idea of light a rainbow/bifrost, acting as a bridge to Asgard’.

MP3 to come.

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Asgard

by Ross Beattie

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Stand beside me brother and together we can begin again. Only through death can we break the existence in which we suffer. We will wash our exhausted hands in the blood filled rivers, before growing strength again to walk fearlessly through the doubt. Will we ever know if we are too afraid to try ? I see the palaces in my mind, huge hallways and gold walled rooms, beauty in our control from the sacrifices we choose to make. Wisdoms waits at the end of the battle, and even though we cannot see what lays ahead we mustn’t turn our heads now from fear as that will make this an ending instead of the beginning that it stands to be. So stand strong beside me and we will cover the ground in flesh, and build every single mountain from the bones we will rip away from the deathly cold that controls all we see. And from there we can create all that I know is possible.

The Found Poetry Collaboration 2014

For the last 4 weeks poets Lydia Allison, Kate Garrett, James Giddings and Joanna Lee have been writing 1 piece of found poetry per fortnight:

A found poem is created when words in an existing piece of writing are lifted from that writing and rearranged to create a greater emotional response. A found poem is shaped from a collection of words or phrases found in one text or a selection of texts to shape an entirely new poem.

The poets were free to use any texts they like, and I have thrown in one found text of my choice per fortnight just to mix it up a bit. For the Week 4 poem I chose a section from a novel by Iain Banks called ‘The Bridge’(you’ll find the section at the bottom of the post, should you wish to read it).

the physiology of bursting

by Joanna Lee

a threshold is not a point down-river, a huge handless clockface formed by stone-remembered rooms full of whispering glass. test the walls, no matter how close. the thick, white- tiled passages converge like fast current: rapt & rusted. lightwells hold to the saddle, to the boundary defining a patient shadow cleaning a window full of the damp footfall’ed equilibria who refuse to leave. if the precise initial condition is a cradle’s pulse, small perturbations will certainly push the limit cross grimed flags to one side or the other. find the keyholes. dust the hinges. walk spiking and of great length. glow.

To leave the cradle

by Kate Garrett

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I ran away and joined a group of gypsies pawned silver beneath apple hung branches safe from respectable society, and wrapped forged letters in half a Romany scarf. I had a lover of uncertain temper, no greater rogue –

he rubbed gunpowder into his wounds, twisted, like a shipwrecked smallpox victim. His sins caused this plague. Our rickety dwelling sold, his throat cut. I was taken by wandering monks from the tangled woodland.

I cheated the hangman’s noose not once but three times – between stone-remembered messages my ghost haunts many places: open moor, wild heathland, ancient passages, a patch of light in a house called maudlin.

Test the doors, the hinges. Living and non-living matter. Living things are thinly scattered, they fill the space. A corridor. A large round patch of light glows ahead, broadens out. The air, I’d swear, forming complex webs of life.

A length of wall which ought to hold lush forests, mountains, rainfall. The patch of floor has a rainshadow I don’t recall.

I reach the great round river polishing the glass with a rag.

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Texts:

Animal ed. David Burnie (2001) p.36

The Bridge by Iain Banks (1990) p.131

In The Café Of The Airport Next To My Psychiatrist’s

by James Giddings

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My wife is having an affair; it doesn’t feel like I thought it would: rooms full of whispering, our telepathy losing signal behind tall pot-plants, our shouting at each other with the volume stuck on full. The carpet squelches with each footfall. ‘Life is what you make it,’ the scratchy tannoy says. ‘Life’s a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.’ Mr. Johnson stirs confetti into his coffee, swallows a stale sandwich. Dr Joyce’s patient cleans a patch of light on the window, polishes the shadow from the glass at its centre with a rag. The air smells damp. I drink so much my mouth tastes of pencils. ‘Over here Don broke up with Emily for the second time; they were eating omelettes with dry bread, sucking on cigarettes.’ Pretty much all of them are going to break your heart: the atheist in his chinos and well-fitted salmon shirt, the novelist with her red-brick pencil skirt, her lap you want to nervously rest your head on; how, in the light rain, they both love and fail at everything. Just remember, some come, some go. When her plane takes off my head swells; the weightless moment usually makes her think about snow-globes, white sugar landing softly, as if on the moon; she thinks about sex, my hands being dropped ticket stubs fumbling for loose change in a train station. She thinks about pancakes, dreams rooftops on the seabed. She is submerging herself in the pool of the pilots voice, how a toad might in cold water. I deserve so much less than you. Don’t give up, Sweetie.

Sadlythe found poetry collaboration with Lydia, Kate, James and Joanna has concluded but without a doubt you will be seeing them again in future collaborations on ArtiPeeps. It’s been a pleasure to work with all 4 of the foundlings.

I walk beneath the ancient, age-grimed flags, between the niches occupied by stone-remembered officials, past rooms full of whispering, smartly uniformed clerks. I cross dim, white-tiled lightwells on rickety cross-corridors, peer through keyholes into locked, dark, deserted passages whose floors are inches deep in dust and debris. I test the doors, but the hinges have rusted.

Finally, I come to a familiar corridor. A large round patch of light glows on the carpet ahead, where the corridor broadens out. The air smells damp; I’d swear the thick, dark carpet squelches with each footfall. I can see tall pot-plants now, and a length of wall which ought to hold the entrance to the L-shaped lift. The patch of light on the floor has a shadow in the centre of it which I don’t recall. The shadow moves.

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I reach the light. The great round window is there, still staring down-river like a huge handless clock-face. The shadow is cast by Mr Johnson. Dr Joyce’s patient who refuses to leave the cradle. He is cleaning a window, polishing the glass at its centre with a rag, an expression of rapt concentration on his face. (131, published by Abacus, 1990)

To get involved contact us via any of the comments boxes on our posts/pages or @ArtiPeeps. You would be very welcome!

Vikings Ahoy! It’s The Nine Realms!

ONGOING EPICS

THE NINE REALMS (2014-2015):
Watch this space for our next 9-month large-scale collaborative project ! Starting in the 2nd Week of October 2014. Inspired by the Norse Sagas and Norse Cosmology, Giving creative opportunities to nearly 50 creatives. We'll be combining poetry, prose, art, music and sculpting a Viking boat out of ash, Vikings Ahoy!!!

The Nine Realms Poetry Playlist

The Nine Realms Realm Music

PAST EPIC COLLABORATIONS

TRANSFORMATIONS (2013-2014)

A POETRY AND ART EPIC:

31 Creatives from all around the world and the UK showcased through 1 Contemporary Reworking of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Making the virtual real via a poetry-art exhibition held at Hanse House, Norfolk, 12-14th September 2014,

The launch of our large-scale exhibition template to be used to give creatives from all disciplines collaborative opportunities year on year.

Wisdom & Mindfulness

ArtiPeeps Videos On Vimeo

Osho: From The Book of Understanding

EXPRESS YOURSELF IN AS MANY WAYS AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT FEAR.THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR.THERE IS NOBODY WHO IS GOING TO PUNISH OR REWARD YOU. EXPRESS YOUR BEING IN ITS TRUEST FORM, IN ITS NATURAL FLOW, YOU WILL BE REWARDED IMMEDIATELY, NOT TOMORROW BUT TODAY, HERE & NOW. YOU ARE PUNISHED ONLY WHEN YOU GO AGAINST YOUR NATURE. BUT THE PUNISHMENT IS A HELP. IT IS SIMPLY AN INDICATION THAT YOU HAVE MOVED AWAY FROM NATURE, THAT YOU HAVE GONE A LITTLE ASTRAY-OFF THE ROAD-COME BACK. PUNISHMENT IS NO REVENGE.NO, PUNISHMENT IS ONLY AN EFFORT TO WAKE YOU UP: 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING?' . SOMETHING IS WRONG, SOMETHING IS GOING AGAINST YOURSELF. THAT'S WHY THERE IS PAIN, THERE IS ANXIETY.

EVOLUTION IS INTRINSIC TO MAN'S NATURE, EVOLUTION IS HIS VERY SOUL, AND THOSE WHO TAKE THEMSELVES FOR GRANTED REMAIN UNFULFILLED. THOSE WHO THINK THEY ARE BORN COMPLETE REMAIN UNEVOLVED. THEN THE SEED REMAINS THE SEED. IT NEVER BECOMES A TREE AND NEVER KNOWS THE JOYS OF SPRING AND THE SUNSHINE AND THE RAIN AND THE ECSTASY OF BURSTING INTO MILLIONS OF FLOWERS.